


Maggie

by somekindofseizure



Series: WTID Supplemental Reading [8]
Category: The Fall (TV 2013), The X-Files
Genre: Maggie - Freeform, William - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 14:43:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11511546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure
Summary: Anonymous asked:Did Scullys mom ever meet Stella? What does she think of her relationship with Scully?





	Maggie

 

Scully looks at the caller ID on her way to the fridge for a glass of lemonade.  

“You want something stronger than that?”  Stella asks over the blear of the ringing.  It sounds like encouragement, an allowance.  You can drink anything you want when you have to give your child up.

“After dinner.”

“Are you avoiding your mother?”

Scully shrugs, slurps, makes a face at the tartness.  Stella smiles and pushes a jar of sugar at her.  

“No, no, it’s good, I’ll get used to it.”

“Everyone avoids their mother from time to time.  I just want to make sure it’s not because I’m here.”

Scully furrows her brow and flips her hair.  The last time she washed it she lost the motivation to finish the blowout halfway through and had to ask Stella to come in and help her.  She doesn’t recognize herself when she looked at herself in the mirror in the morning.

“What would you have to do with it?”

“I’m not exactly the kind of friend you take home to mum.”

Scully looks at her lemonade and smirks.  It’s true. It has crossed her mind that her mother would take one look at Stella and somehow be able to tell… everything. Her mother’s from another generation, she’s traditional, an Irish Catholic.  Scully doesn’t want another thing for her mother to give her critical, concerned glances about.

“I can control my use of the word fuck, you know.”

“I know that.”

“I can also step out while she stops by so you can be alone with her.”

“No,” Scully says quickly and Stella notices the speed, the urgency of her refusal.  “I don’t want to be alone with her either.”

Stella waits.

“I can’t take the way she looks at me,” Scully finally says in a low voice.  “She’s trying to be sympathetic but every time she talks about him, I can see the question in her eyes, as if there was some better option I missed.”  She begins to choke on the tears but Stella doesn’t even flinch, it’s so common lately.  Sometimes, Stella hears her crying in bed and comes to lie down behind her, tucks herself around Scully from chin to ankles.  Other than that, she seems not to notice when the jags start and stop.

Stella nods.  “My relationship with my mother was not good.”

“Ours is.”

“Then I suggest you answer the phone sometime.  Talk about other things.  Like we do.”

“My mother’s not going to tell me about the guy from yoga class.”

Stella nods, licks her lips. She’s given up.  Scully lets out a breath masked as pure relief but recognizes a shred of disappointment somewhere, like somehow she’d hoped Stella would win this one.  It’s a very recognizable feeling, a Mulder feeling.  Talk me into it.  Convince me. And she sees his face and feels a pang in her chest.  The subject has turned to the fish Stella’s got browning in the pan.

It doesn’t come up for another four days.  She returns home from work and hears laughter from the hallway.  She finds Stella on the couch with her knees folded up like a tripod, glass of Scotch balanced between hand and kneecap.  She’s got company, sitting in the armchair beside the couch, also drinking Scotch.

“Hi,” Scully says to her mother.  “I see you’ve met Stella.”

“Yes,” says her mother, still recovering from her laughter, rubbing the arm of the chair with one hand, and there is something knowing about it, but Scully can’t put her finger on what.

“What are we talking about that’s so funny?” Scully asks as she puts her bag down.  She’s unable to imagine how this scene came about.  She is what these two women have in common and nothing about her life is funny right now.

“Men,” her mother says with a broad smile.  Scully raises her eyebrows and looks at Stella, who shrugs one shoulder, touches her lips with a finger.  The portrait of innocence.  

“I was telling her about the guy from yoga,” Stella says and extends one leg to pat the empty end of the couch with her bare foot.  At least she’s not in stilettos.  “Come sit with us.”

“Okay,” Scully says, trying to make eye contact with Stella under the shade of their eyelids as she comes around to the front of the couch, issue some kind of warning or reprimand, but Stella is ignoring her, putting her feet down to handle the pouring.

“Go on, Stella,” her mother says.  “I have to hear the end of this.”

“You won’t believe it,” Stella says as she sets up the third glass.  She’s had it empty, waiting.  Scully sits on the cushion beside Stella and peeks over Stella’s shoulder at the glass.  She braces herself to hear the end of the story for the second time in front of her mother.  She believes it, hopes her mother doesn’t.

“A double,” she murmurs and Stella obliges, clinks their forearms and glasses when she hands it over.  “Go ahead.”


End file.
